Comment on Trump Haters Immediately Flood Twitter With Sick New Hashtag - Pure Evil
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 months agoI would suggest that you read more about the actual event. Go look on any left-of-center site if you want, as long as it’s covering factual information, rather than offering commentary.
There is no information that, prior to the shooting, Rittenhouse had directly or indirectly threatened anyone.
Rittenhouse was on his way out when he was accosted by Rosenbaum; Rosenbaum threw a bag of clothing at Rittenhouse, and tried to grab his rifle. Rittenhouse shot him four times at close range, killing him.
Rittenhouse tried to run away; he was pursued by a crowd. Huber struck him with a skateboard and attempted to grab his rifle; Rittenhouse fatally shot him. Grosskreutz pointed a firearm at Rittenhouse, who shot him once in the arm; Grosskreutz survived, although he’s lost much of the function in his arm.
Rittenhouse did not instigate the violence; he was leaving the protest when he was accosted and attacked.
Should he have been there in the first place? No. Should he have brought a rifle? Also no. (And, in point of fact, his mom didn’t know that he had the rifle, because it had been bought for him by a friend–not his mom as was reported. But, all that said, he was never the aggressor in any legal sense; simply being armed is, by itself, not an immediate threat to do harm, and he was not acting in a threatening manner. Provocative, yes, but threatening, no.
Is Rittenhouse, personally, still a shitty person? Oh yeah. But whether or not he’s a shitbag, he still has a right to defend his own life. Which is what he did, once you actually look at testimony in court.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Something often forgotten is that Kyle was a supporter of lefty politics before this event.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Eh. He says that he was. But given how sharp his turn was to Proud Man-Children, et al. as soon as he was in legal trouble, I have a hard time believing it. I’ve def. seen a number of people that say that they support “progressive” politics, but they only support them as long as it doesn’t affect them in any way; as soon as it e.g. hurts their property values, they suddenly go full-conservative. I’ve got a buddy that supports criminal justice reform, but balks at college education for convicts because college cost him money, and why should they get it free? (Hint: because it sharply reduces recidivism.)
I also have a hard time believing that someone that claimed to be in support of leftist politics would be at the protests supporting businesses, of all things. Why not go and help people that were protesting peacefully by providing support? And if he was really just there to provide medical help–as if he was a corpsman, which he ain’t–and help with clean up, why would he need a rifle at all? It’s just so goddamn stupid.
I honestly think that, had he not been armed, he would have been fine; I think the rifle made people think he was a threat, when he wasn’t.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 3 months ago
By protecting the property, you are providing support to those peacefully protesting.
I started my career as a combat medic in the Army. We carried rifles. We need a rifle to stop those trying to harm us or the people we are helping. Everyone does not follow the rules of warfare.
I will say the ironic part is only at a Democrat riot can you shoot three people and hit two child molesters and three felons.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Why? To put it in concrete terms, the person that tried to assassinate Trump was, by all accounts, a hard-right conservative. Would it be reasonable to expect Trump to make a hard left turn? I’ve been sexually assaulted by a gay man; would I be reasonable in taking that experience, and extrapolating that to mean that all gay men were just lying in wait to sexually assault straight men?
The truth is that people that truly believe in their core values don’t tend to change those values overnight. It’s almost always a long, drawn-out process, regardless of how deeply traumatic an event might be. The speed at which Rittenhouse changed course leads me to believe that he was either never left of center in the first place, or doesn’t hold any moral/ethical beliefs very deeply. Given that he is, by all accounts, quite dumb, it could readily be the latter.
Sure. And I agree. We need significant criminal justice reform, even for people that we’ve decided are too dangerous to ever get out. But most people will get out, eventually, and they need some kind of opportunities if they aren’t going to end up getting recycled right back into the system. I’ve found that approaching prison reform from a utilitarian perspective appeals more to people that trend conservative than moral appeals about education being good for it’s own sake, and therefore something that we should be making available to prisoners. Esp. since there are a lot of people–mostly conservatives–that will say, ‘well, I had to pay for it, so why should someone else get it for free?’
…That’s not a very leftist view, TBH. Valuing property over the people themselves is more of a typical capitalist view. To quote MLK Jr., “But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again.”
Not my point. My point was that he had very, very limited training in dealing with medical emergencies. In a real medical emergency, he would have been absolutely useless. AFAIK, he hasn’t taken a basic ‘stop the bleed’ class, much less a combat lifesaver course. (And, TBH, I haven’t been able to find the latter anywhere in my area, which makes it prohibitively expensive, but I’m at least up for stopping most bleeds and have a solid IFAK that I keep on my gun belt.)